It dawned on me the other day that the most important thing I can do as we transition into this new season of homeschooling is pray.
I tend to run ahead without checking in with God. I start adding teaching supplies to my Amazon cart. I begin worrying about how I’ll ever teach Jackson Algebra. Um, hello! He’s six!
I start thinking about the huge responsibility I have to educate my son and it freaks me out. Even though I have complete peace about our decision, I know it’s going to be hard.
It’s going to take grit, as my husband would say (He seriously loves using that word).
I consider my prayer life pretty strong.
For years I’ve kept a prayer journal. I love going back through it to see how God took care of all the details that mattered so much to me at the time I wrote the requests down.
Prayer changes things.
As a special needs mom I fervently pray for God to give me wisdom and strength. I pray to be patient and present. I pray for Jackson’s future – that God would use his story for His glory. There’s a long list of needs I pray for, but I found something was missing.
In her study The Quest, Beth Moore writes, The harder the obedience, the harder you pray for love. Don’t just pray to be strong. Pray to love Jesus more than anyone or anything else on this earth, believing to your core that the best thing you could do for all others in the long run is to love Him most.
Being a special needs parent is hard. Homeschooling a child with special needs is hard. But God has called me to both and I must be obedient.
Plain and simple, if I want to be successful at this homeschool gig, I MUST love God above all else. I must pray that His love flows out of me onto Jackson.
I can order all the supplies. I can read all the books. I can plan all the field trips.
But if I don’t hit my knees and open His word, I will never be equipped for the Quest He’s called me to.
2 Corinthians 9:8 says: And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.
God is all about abundance.
He will give me all that I need for this homeschool quest – the wisdom, the grace, the patience, the desire, the motivation and most importantly, HIS LOVE; especially when the days get hard.